WASHINGTON — Gov. J.B. Pritzker acknowledged on Monday that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott had rebuffed his plea to pause the transport of migrants to Chicago from the southern border in order to protect them from the dangerous sub-zero weather in Chicago.
On Monday, Pritzker was in Des Moines, Iowa, in his role as a representative of President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign and part of a news conference held several hours before Republicans were to meet at Iowa caucus sites to cast their first-in-the-nation votes for a 2024 GOP presidential nominee.
Asked about the migrant crisis Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson are grappling with, Pritzker noted the danger of sending people to Chicago without appropriate winter clothing. People are arriving, Pritzker said, without jackets, “who don’t have shoes, proper shoes.”
Pritzker on Friday begged Abbott in a letter to show some mercy for the migrants sent to Chicago on planes and buses and dressed for warmer climates as the city and state scramble to find more shelters.
Pritzker said in the letter: “Please, while winter is threatening vulnerable people’s lives, suspend your transports and do not send more people to our state.”
On Friday, a spokesperson for Abbott said Pritzker’s request for a pause would not be granted.
Pursuing the matter, over the weekend Pritzker personally paid for ads appealing to Abbott in five Texas newspapers: the Houston Chronicle; Dallas Morning News; Fort Worth Star-Telegram; San Antonio Express News and the Austin American-Statesman.
Asked at the news conference if he had heard from Abbott, Pritzker said, his “response was he rejects my call for a pause and that he will continue to send people even with this weather, even if it is dangerous for the migrants who arrive.”
Pritzker paints Trump, Haley, DeSantis with same MAGA brush; Kinzinger disagrees
Pritzker said that when it comes to promoting an extreme MAGA agenda, referring to Donald Trump’s slogan of “make America great again,” it didn’t matter much who wins the Iowa caucus vote — Trump, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump was declared the winner in Iowa about 7:30 p.m.
“Tonight’s contest is simply a question of whether you like your MAGA Trump agenda wrapped in the original packaging, or with high heels, or lifts in their boots,” Pritzker said, taking a shot at DeSantis, who, some have speculated, wears lifts in his shoes to make himself look taller.
“No matter which version of the Trump MAGA agenda wins tonight — original, heels, or boots — the platform that they are fighting for will cause irreparable harm to this country,” he said.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who is one of the few Republicans willing to speak out against Trump, and who is devoted to trying to block him from becoming president again, said he disagreed with Pritzker’s assessment that Trump, Haley and DeSantis are the same.
Kinzinger, now a CNN commentator, was on a panel discussing Pritzker’s comments at his Des Moines news conference. He said Pritzker should not portray the three Republicans as the same.
“Democrats don’t get the fact,” Kinzinger said, that Trump presents a threat that his rivals do not.
“There has to be an unnatural alliance, an unholy alliance, between the sane right, the center and the left,” in order to defeat Trump.
Said Kinzinger: Pritzker is wrong “when he is saying Nikki Haley is the same as Donald Trump.”
